Customer Spotlight

Huntsville, Al

Location

general Contractor

Trade

Turner is a North America-based, international construction services company and is a leading builder in diverse market segments. The company has earned recognition for undertaking large, complex projects, fostering innovation, embracing emerging technologies, and making a difference for their clients, employees and community. With a staff of 5,600 employees, the company completes $10 billion of construction on 1,500 projects each year. Turner offers clients the accessibility and support of a local firm with the stability and resources of a multinational organization. For more information on how Turner can service you, visit www.turnerconstruction.com.

Vonda Douglass-Drake

Vonda is the southeast trade’s administrator for Turner’s self perform operations (SPO). She is responsible for managing the day-to-day schedule and communicating to over 140 trades people.

Rocky Rose

Trades Manager for SPO, Rocky Rose covers the Huntsville, Alabama area and serves as an advocate for
Turner’s trades people. His responsibilities include interviewing, on- boarding, disciplinary action, estimating, and forecasting.

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I believe in LaborChart

“I love LaborChart and I believe in it. It has made us more organized and improved our communication. We can talk to our people at all levels and get them on the same page. And the software just keeps getting better.”
– Vonda Douglass-Drake

IN-Depth

How did you manage your workforce before LaborChart?

Rocky: We had developed a process for scheduling and communication that took three people running multiple spreadsheets on different laptops, just to track our crews and what they were working on. We used to have to reach out to HR who’d look in a file folder leading to another file folder just to get a phone number to call a guy. It was controlled chaos.
A few years ago, one of my colleagues walked by your booth at a trade show, picked up a card, and when he got back to the office he told me, “Maybe you’d better call this guy.”

What is LaborChart’s role in your organization today?

Vonda: Well, obviously, it’s transformed our scheduling—putting our guys where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there.

Rocky: Yeah, LaborChart helps with the multi-faceted nature of our work and variables like weather that are constantly changing. If it’s raining, you might not need anybody. If the sun’s shining, you might need a bunch of guys.

Vonda: But an equally important impact is communication. Before LaborChart, our tradesmen said they didn’t know what was going on. LaborChart gives us the ability to communicate with everyone in our crews, or to a subset or just one person, to the point where everyone feels they’re involved and knows what’s going on in the company.

Rocky: For mass communication, LaborChart’s the greatest tool we’ve ever had. But it also helps us get information back from the guys in the field, and that’s the be-all, end-all of doing this job well. It’s all about people.

Vonda: And it’s a one-stop shop. We can track trends like who’s late, who’s trained for which jobs, who’s certified for what, and more. It’s really become the tool to go to, because everything we need to know about our employees is here and we can communicate it on a need-to-know basis.

Rocky: From an operations standpoint, it’s always a challenge to assign crews. It’s construction—things change! With LaborChart, we’re able to manage people from one shared platform. Our most valuable resources are our human resources, and if you’ve got the right people on the right job at the right time, you ought to be able to get the job done the way it needs to be done. With LaborChart, I’m now able to spend my time where I’m most valuable to our company instead of shuffling people around on jobs.

Rocky: LaborChart helps our crews deliver what our business development guys are selling. When our guys walk on to a job site, they’re educated, they’re trained, they show up at the right time at the right address with the right superintendent. It’s “boots on the ground,” delivering the sort of positive perception that keeps clients calling us with new projects—not us calling them.

How easy has it been to learn?

Rocky: Like anything, you have to get comfortable with a new tool. A carpenter who’s been wearing a nail apron for 30 years doesn’t have to look in his pouch to know where his nail set is. With LaborChart, the more you use it, the more comfortable you get navigating in it, the more information you store to the point where it really is a “one-stop shop.”

From the get-go, even though it was new, it was new in the right kind of way, because it was flexible to fit our needs rather than a cookie-cutter approach. And it’s not intimidating! I felt right at home sitting down with it and playing with it to learn it.

We also really liked that it wasn’t a single huge purchase. In fact, we could invest in LaborChart for a limited number of people until we understood it, and “grow into it” by adding people as our needs evolved.

What were your biggest concerns when evaluating LaborChart?

Vonda: I’d say cost—would it bring a return on our investment? Also, would our team buy into it?

Rocky: That’s right, because the best tool for managing people is good feedback from the guys who manage people. And they know what their needs will be two weeks from now, so if we can actually get them to use any tool with a two-week look-ahead interval, we’ll run like a well-oiled machine.

We also wanted to make sure LaborChart was flexible, and could adapt to our needs. And during evaluation, we noticed how you were always open to feedback to help the product evolve and adapt to our needs.

What are some signs that LaborChart is working for you?

Rocky: Now, when a foreman calls a mechanic, the mechanic will say, “I’m not going until I get a notification.” That’s a LaborChart notification, which means better awareness and accountability for everyone.

Vonda: We’re not perfect, but we’re getting there. And its making us stand out, and we have other business units coming to ours trying to figure out what we’re doing, because we’re doing such a good job. That’s why I preach LaborChart to everyone who asks: I’m telling you, this one-stop-shop will make your life easy.

Turner's Favorite Features

Visual interface

“The visual interface helps us easily see where all the guys are at a glance, and assists us with forecasting future crew requirements. In addition, the tags component helps us keep current with every worker’s training and certifications with real-time access—It’s not buried in a folder somewhere.”

Filters

“I like the filters that help us meet the specific needs of our clients. We can determine if we have the skills we need before we even get there, and that gives us a window of opportunity to make sure we can get the right people the proper training if necessary.”

Worker's Photos

“I like the way LaborChart lets us store pictures of our workers, helps us be more efficient, and builds a positive rapport. When you walked on-to a jobsite before, you’d have to ask, ‘Where is Eddy Ellis?’ Thanks to the profile pictures, now you can just find him and say, ‘Hi, Eddy!’ “